Re: Hair loss (was Re: underwater space aliens)

Tom Clarke (clarke@longwood.cs.ucf.edu)
24 Oct 1995 09:28:06 -0400

In article <46hoic$hh6@newsbf02.news.aol.com> jthurb@aol.com (JTHURB) writes:
>Mr. Clarke,

>Please see SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN May 1994, East Side Story by Yves Coppens.
>It gives a logical explanation for the long ago split from the last common
>ancestor. According to Coppens, the West Side guys became pan and the
>East Side folks, you and me.

I will certainly do that, it is probably on the shelf at home.
I probably read it, but will pay more attention this time.
Not that it matters much in this group, Sci Am, is not a REAL journal :-)

>It fits well with La Lumiere's hypothetical Danakil Island

I don't know the name La Lumiere. I first came across Danakil Island
in William Calvin's books. Can you point me a La Lumiere reference?

Incidentally, I happened to be in the library this morning and decided
to try to find curves of sea level change as part of the Danakil Island
idea is that sea level changes isolated the Danakil alps for a while.

I found same in "Phanerozoic Sea-Level Changes" by Anthony Hallam
(1992, Columbia Univ Press, NY). On page 137, figure 5.5 shows
sea level versus time for miocene to present.

At the end of the Miocene sea level was about at current levels.
There is a jump to 80 to 100 m above present levels for about
a million years early in the pliocene (zanclian). After that
the level fluctuates on a scale of a few hundred K years from
a few tens of meters above present levels to 100 or more meters below.

Thus the island ape hypothesis is hemmed in. If some miocene
apes were isolated on an island, it had to be between the endo
of the miocene and about a million years into the pliocene.
This is consistent with DNA evidence on the miocene end and fossil
evidence on the pliocene end. Any fossils earlier than the 4.5 MYA
ones already found will give the island ape hypothesis serious
problems. (That's literary speak for disprove it).

Tom Clarke

-- 

  People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment

  and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against

  the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices - Adam Smith, WofN